


A Winter's Tale

by Nighthaunting



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: /lies, Gen, adopting strange children out of the wolf pack is no basis for a system of government, fleshing out russ' backstory more sensibly than canon did, honestly, im not salty at all, makes a lot of his characterization make a lot more sense, mostly headcanons, russ starting out at the absolute bottom of society, than his suddenly becoming royal before he even really understands how humans work, with the expectation that he's going to stay there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was a prince, Leman was given his name.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For Fiction Friday: “It turns out X can play Y instrument very well”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Winter's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'A Winter's Tale' by Jeremy Soule

Before he was a prince, Leman was given his name. 

Although it was perhaps more accurate to say that a name had grown on him, the old women taking him in hand to put his strong back to work on chores in the kitchens: scrubbing floors, hauling endless buckets of water, butchering meat, peeling and husking and coring, grinding hard dark oats for flour, churning butter, stoking the great hearth fires, and threading needles for the many women who called themselves his grandmothers. It was not thankless, and they called him lennán until it came near enough to a name and gave him spare sour-sweet apples from the day’s baking; teaching him skills that a man of Fenris could not rightly claim for himself, but that a changeling-child turned scullion learned with all the speed and grace of a pup who’d been torn from his mother and thrown into the wilds of human existence. 

At night, after the hold had dined and retired–-all of the dishes cleared down to the kitchens to be scrubbed, and the leftovers saved or used to feed the stock animals kept for milk and meat and wool–-the skjalds would come down to have their late supper. They’d bring their instruments with them, and play for the women as they worked; half for their art, playing the slow old ballads that for all their beauty were out of favor when the hold was at its most glad, and half to charm extra portions and mugs of ale for themselves. The skjalds never minded when Leman sat at their feet after his work was done, changeling-child or no, and sometimes on these late nights one or another of them would laughingly press their lute into Leman’s long-fingered hands and teach him chords. 

Leman learned, watching and listening and letting his hands be adjusted on the strings the first few times he played, until his skill could be said to surpass any of the skjalds in the hold. The tone of his notes sweeter, his memory for the lyrics to the lays and ballads and sagas keener. It was not considered amiss that a scullion–-changeling though he might be, watched after closely by gothi with speculative eyes–-might rise slightly from his station to become a skjald.

But Leman did not become a skjald, the intrigues and costs of being a king laying heavily across Thengir’s shoulders until adopting a strange child was better than having his hold split between quarreling Jarls, and it was many years until he held a lute again. 

-

If there was one thing Russ both hadn’t expected to find and was completely unsurprised to see in Fulgrim’s rooms it was a lute. 

The instrument was a masterpiece of lacquered wood and gilded frets, finer than any that Leman had held or played on Fenris. Idly, he reached out and ran the tip of a finger over the strings, finding them perfectly taut. 

Fulgrim’s scent heralded his entrance, a waft of the perfume in his hair and the underlying tang of steel and enhanced chemistry, “Lovely, isn’t it?”

“The lute or you?” Russ parried out of form, without turning. It made Fulgrim laugh as he settled onto the sofa, amused enough without thinking Russ was serious. 

“You,” Fulgrim mused, “are more interested in that than most of the things I’ve tried to entertain you with this entire compliance.” 

Russ hummed in agreement, taking up the lute and settling it in his lap, “Allow me to apologize,” he said, glancing at Fulgrim as he settled his fingers on the strings. Fulgrim looked almost child-like in his enthrallment, pulling his knees up to his chest to sit cross-legged on the sofa, “You play?” he smiled, a true smile, broader and happier that Russ was sharing something of himself.

“I learned when I was younger,” Russ said, beginning to pick out the melody of an old ballad.

**Author's Note:**

> lennán and ‘leman’ mean about the same thing, the difference being ‘leman’ is old norse and means something along the lines of ‘concubine, prostitute’ and lennán is old gaelic and means something along the lines of ‘sweetheart, darling, *or* concubine’. when i headcanon i actually prefer to think russ’ proper name is lennán, and the ‘nná’ got conflated into ‘ma’ because fenrisian runes don’t work into gothic very well. GW really didn't try very hard with primarch naming. they really didn't. 
> 
> also, i like russ and fulgrim being friends. they seem like they’d get along, being similarly theatrical but hiding insecurities.


End file.
